tonight, i want to express our thoughts and prayers that everyone affected by this terrible tragedy in newtown, connecticut. our words can do little to ease your pain. but you know this. we are with you in this incredibly difficult time. and recognize that you are who we are thinking about, even as we try to focus on our work today. so as for the markets, it was another weak day. dow dipped 36 points. s&p gave up .41%. nasdaq declined .70. a lot of that again because of apple. you know the drill as we head into the weekend. i'm not expecting to hear any progress on the fiscal cliff. but you know, i always watch the sunday morning talk shows now very closely and i'm looking for some politicians saying something encouraging. what does encouraging mean? it means a republican uttering the two words tax increase without the word no before it. and the democrats uttering two words, spending cuts, without the word no before them. neither seems to be able to pull off that syntax, though. at this point i think we've got to assume that the washington people, they can't get it together. we've got to gird